Herman the German

Through the crowd emerged a fur-draped stunning platinum doll, heading straight for me. Yes, this was she, Ann M! My heart skipped a few beats as she took me by the hand and towed me to the adjoining hotel bar. I had never seen an American bar, let alone sat on one of its high stools. “What will it be, soldier?” the bartender asked. I had not the slightest idea what to order; except for beer or Chinese rice wine, I had never drunk any alcohol. When I hesitated, my beautiful companion asked sympathetically, “Sergeant, do you prefer a hard or a soft drink?” Her question was totally incomprehensible to me. Hard? Soft? To me all drinks were liquid! For herself, she ordered something “double”; to make a quick decision, I asked for a Coke….

We were talking about China and her brother when Miss M. pointed toward an elderly gentleman entering the bar from the lobby. “Here comes Sugar Daddy!” (Who?) After a brief introduction I was beginning to relive with him the flying days of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and his 94 Squadron in France, of which this sugar daddy had been a member in 1918. The gentleman, president of a company whose name I had heard in China, invited Ann M. and me to a delicious dinner in the sumptuous dining room upstairs. I hadn’t selected something to eat from a printed menu for years! A glass-covered dessert cart was rolled to our table. After rice and sponge cake for the past three years, Viennese pastry and chocolate pie were quite a treat. When I said good night to both of them, Miss M. asked me to call her the next time I’d be in New York—but I chickened out! I never saw her again.

At nine next morning, the colonel picked me up for the press conference. There were twenty-two reporters from the New York Time, Herald Tribune, Post, Daily News, German-American newspapers in English and German, and many more. An hour-long interview, questions and answers primarily related to my being in the American Army and why we had been losing so many air bases in China recently. The colonel had to kick my knee only twice, when questions relating to Mme. Chiang and the Generalissimo came up. Photos were taken after the interview.

I bought one each of next morning’s newspapers. When I read what the reporters had to say about our conference, I nearly died! Incredibly different stories came from one and the same interview; many articles were not only untrue, inaccurate and exaggerated, but outright sensational. I was terribly embarrassed. Of all the newspapers, only two were accurate. In the next issue of Life, the back cover of its overseas edition sported a full-page photo of my head and shoulders, with the caption “G.I. in a Jam,” reporting correctly that I had just arrived from overseas as a U.S. Air Force master sergeant and was an ex-Flying Tiger, but could not get a commission because I first had to obtain U.S. citizenship. A United Press reporter invited me for a day-long car ride next day to see other parts of New York City, from Harlem to Wall Street an to lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. Since the colonel had told me earlier that my trip to Washington would have to be delayed by one day (because no Pullman reservation could be obtained until then), I was glad to accept the reporter’s invitation to see more of New York.

Once arrived in Washington, I had an immediate appointment with famed General Wild Bill Donovan, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War I. He had received a message from General Chennault, outlining my background and requesting him to do whatever he could to get me a “direct field commission” since I handled classified material. The friendly and informal OSS general, a lawyer in civilian life, welcomed me at the door to his office. I described to him the current state of the Chinese forces as I had observed them. He listened attentively, then summoned his aide (a Navy captain) and ordered him to see that I was well taken care of during my first visit to this country, and that I did receive the commission as an officer. For an extra welcome bonus he directed that I get a blank, preauthorized pad of ten three-day passes, which I myself was to fill out wherever I might be at those dates. I thanked General Donovan and promised to see him again in sixty days. I remained with his aide, who called a government lawyer and requested him to research what it would take to do what the OSS general wanted.

“Where to next?” asked the aide.

Thinking of a friend of the Calcutta Red Cross girl, Virginia, I replied, “To Chicago.” The captain arranged for a train reservation leaving Washington in a few days. That same afternoon I looked up the address near Rock Creek Park of the chess-playing girl, given to me by the soldier I met playing chess in India. Because I had written her address on a separate slip of paper, it was not lost as was my black book at the Pyramids in Cairo. No one answered her doorbell. I waited for a while, sitting on a hallway step, then walked to a nearby corner drugstore—the very first American-style drugstore I had even been in, i.e., in which one could buy just about everything besides drugs. A young waitress concocted for me a giant ice-cream sundae: black, white, pink and yellow, topped with marshmallow, chocolate sauce and nuts…the works! Her boss came over to see what was going on—then refused to let me pay.

Before returning to downtown Washington I went one more time to see if the chess-playing lawyer had come home while I was stuffing myself. She had. Clarice’s pretty little face with her shiny, bright and attractive eyes peered out from behind the chain holding her door slightly ajar. From the hall I passed on greetings from her friend of the 20^th Air Force whom I had met in India five days before; only then did she let me into her apartment. Clarice had just returned from donating blood for the Red Cross and she accepted my dinner invitation for that evening. With so many “surplus” girls in Washington, all out “to please the soldier in uniform” (so they said, anyhow), it was easy to have a date with a different